In the crisp morning air, day breaks to the sound of a diesel engine idling as the high school kids get on the school bus. It will be back again in an hour and a half to pick up the elementary kids. The wheels on the bus go round and round, getting kids where they need to go. The long, hot nights of summer have given way to fresh, bright mornings. It’s back to school in Walltown. I think of... Read more
If you follow The Everyday Awakening, you know I’m excited about School for Conversion’s Project TURN, which hosts courses in North Carolina prisons where people from outside of prisons study alongside people who are incarcerated. Over the past few years, celebrated author and Duke Divinity School professor Lauren Winner has become one of Project TURN’s biggest supporters. In her recent memoir, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, Lauren writes about her first visit to one of our courses. I’m glad... Read more
I was on Greenville College’s campus yesterday to preach their Convocation and kick off a great senior seminar they have here on “abundance and need.” Was reminded of why I’m so glad I went to a Christian liberal arts school and why I continue to think they’re important today: they create the possibility of a lively conversation between young people and older adults about what God wants us to be doing in the world. As I talk to students on... Read more
In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, at an Opportunity Industrial Center (OIC) on the east side of town, an auditorium is bustling with activity on a Saturday morning. I’m greeted at the door by a friendly church deacon who offers my kids donuts and points me toward the coffee. Over the PA system, I hear the booming voice of Rev. William Barber, one of North Carolina’s best preachers and the tireless president of our state NAACP branch. I’m here because Rev.... Read more
I love how John Howard Yoder described evangelism: “When we preach the Christian gospel we are not talking about ideas; we are reporting events.” The evangelists who are captivating the imagination of a new generation get this. They’re not offering neatly packaged answers to life’s persistent questions. They’re telling stories about how God is stirring in movements for justice and peace, about how lives are being transformed by a relationship with God in a new kind of community. At least,... Read more
I’ve written here about the urban gardens movement that I see now almost everywhere I go these days. (Our friends at MSA are tracking this movement, too). Most of the time, these gardens are being planted by the new-comers to our nation’s abandoned inner-cities. That’s certainly been the case here in Walltown. But I was delighted to visit the Hoover Garden in Little Rock, AR, earlier this year and to learn that it was started from within one of the... Read more
Between the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the domestic terrorist attack at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and the shooting at the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, it’s been a terrible few weeks for gun violence in America. These high-profile shootings have stirred up earnest conversation about why Americans have so many guns and why we so often use them to shoot one another. Parents at the park and neighbors on street corners are searching for answers, even if... Read more
I met Jesse DeConto when he was a reporter covering faith-based resistance to the death penalty in North Carolina. We caught up a few years later and wrote a piece for The Christian Century on Project TURN, the prison-based education program that School for Conversion runs. As both a writer and a musician, Jesse keeps his eyes open for signs of God’s kingdom breaking into our world. I’m glad to share this testimony about how God is showing up in... Read more
Earlier this week, Tony Jones noted that many Christians who are calling for a faith more engaged with the world have surprising little to say about God. A good point–and one that’s particularly disturbing over the long haul. Think, for example, about how many institutions that were inspired by faith have completely cut off any official connection to God-talk. Hospitals, for example. I’m just back from visiting one this afternoon. The orderly who was taking my friend to surgery looked... Read more
Every couple of days I run into someone who asks me, “So, did George win that van?” If you missed our little campaign back in the spring, you can go back and read about it here. I entered my friend George, who stays with us at Rutba House, into a national contest to win a handicap accessible van. George was shot in our neighborhood about a year and a half ago and is paralyzed from the neck down. He could... Read more
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
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